


drown the hellfire

by agivise



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: M/M, Stream of Consciousness, Unreliable Narrator, another one of my grammatical literary disasters, apparently i can't write more than two paragraphs without putting in obscure cooking tips, but they're so fun to write, this is just me rambling about dogs and snow by referencing pretentious mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-29 00:34:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13915590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agivise/pseuds/agivise
Summary: there were still ashes in the fireplace and a dog-eared book on the coffee table when the two of you arrived here not long ago, in a desperate attempt to lay very, very low for a short while.the dogs he cared so dearly for are long gone, though, off into the wilderness somewhere. you can tell he misses them more than he shows.(or, hal proposes, but only sort of.)





	drown the hellfire

**Author's Note:**

> this is as palatable as my unadjusted writing is ever gonna get sorry folks im just a mess of a writer  
> very mild blood warning and i swear a lot what else is new  
> today's song recs: attica 71 by olivver the kid and iceberg by borns

there are no sparrows here.

sparrows are your favorite bird. you aren’t sure why. you don’t often think about birds. but it’s tough to keep them from permeating your mind as you stand out here. it’s not that you see them often — hell, you aren’t sure you remember the last time you saw a bird here — but when you gaze out at the mountains, impossibly tall and crisp and present, you can’t help but imagine how fantastic it would be to have spanning wings and hollow bones, to sweep from zenith to zenith under the sickly clear sky.

it’s much too cold for sparrows, though. they’re frail little bastards. probably couldn’t even scavenge meat from something long-dead without wasting more energy than they gained.

the landscape is perfectly monochrome. a strict, slick blue. not the same shade as your old gameboy, or dave’s eyes. the former is too saturated, the latter too silvery. but it’s blue all the same. in the summer, alaska becomes much greener, and yellow flowers dot the sharp white edges of the glaciers. in the summer, the sky turns soft shades of orange and grey and lavender when the clouds scatter light. it is not summer. it is blue.

dave’s been calling you ‘hal’ more often, recently. that’s definitely odd.

the smooth surface of snow and ice layering the plain acts as a vast mirror to the sky, completely undisturbed by footprints. even the deer have kept to the woods behind you, refusing to stray from the blanketing effect of the pines, though that doesn’t stop dave from taking one down with a single arrow to the throat and dragging it back to the cabin, dead silent the whole stretch of time. if you notice the irony of him using a bow rather than a rifle, you don’t point it out to him.

he works quickly, knife in hand, and cleans the carcass without a word. you don’t want to watch — the startling red of the gore still makes you dizzy, even after all these years — but dave’s too fascinating of a creature to ever look away from, not when he’s too distracted to notice your enamored staring.

there were dented cans and crumbling boxes in the cupboards when you showed up. the place had always been stocked with non-perishables. medkits, weapons, soap, blankets, the like. this place was practically a panic room. it always was, really, even back when he lived here, with his fifty dogs and stygian winter darkness and overwhelming stockpiles of alcohol. almost everything is just as he left it. there were still ashes in the fireplace and a dog-eared book on the coffee table when the two of you arrived here not long ago, in a desperate attempt to lay very, very low for a short while.

the dogs he cared so dearly for are long gone, though, off into the wilderness somewhere. you can tell he misses them more than he shows.

(occasionally, you worry that he’ll come home from a hunt one day without an ounce of food, and with a very angry wolf on a very makeshift leash, to keep as a pseudo-pet. if anyone could do it, it would be david. you are exceptionally grateful that he has exercised some self control in this regard.)

the deer is cleaned, some of the meat strung over a pile of cinders to smoke and dry, some more hanging above the flames of the fireplace to roast, and the rest tossed into an icebox to be kept until needed. the offal and bones are discarded back into the distance of the woods, aside from a stray pile of femurs, which has begun to accrue out to the side of the cabin. you begin to wonder if he really is trying to lure in a wild animal to replace his beloved sled dogs. or maybe it’s just muscle memory to him, and he’s only collecting bones for dogs that are no longer there.

you can’t tell if you love it or hate it here.

you can summarize the feeling pretty succinctly: you hate the cold, but you love him. you know it can’t last, that once the immediate danger back in the contiguous states has passed, you’ll have to leave here, and go back to the missions, to the grocery stores and computer programs and apocalyptic conspiracies, to the world-saving and people-hurting and information-robbing.

it’s killing you to not have wifi, really. it’s fucking freezing and almost perpetually dark and you can feel the cabin fever biting at the edges of your consciousness, driving you a little stir crazy. you stare at the endless, self-similar plains of unmarred snow and the fractal edges of the mountain range, and you feel yourself becoming more solipsistic by the second. this landscape is nihilistic, so why can’t you be?

but he seems so at home here, a look you’ve never seen on him before. you can almost picture dropping everything right here, right now, and staying like this forever. getting fifty new dogs. becoming recluses together. maybe he’d even teach you archery and trapping, and you could go with him on hunts and pretend that he needs the company. you always feel so bad for the rabbits, though. for now, you’ll stick to purifying the drinking water and stoking the fireplace.

this is a very temporary situation, and you know it. you’re both risking a lot by being out here, cut of from all contact, but it’s tough to save the world if you’re dead. for now, for a little white longer, you get to exist without worldly obligation. you wish it could be like this forever.

you can almost picture yourself curling up in the snow, letting the cold consume your fingers and toes as the subtle warmth of hypothermic blood reaches your heart. if you died off in the desert somewhere, the buzzards would pick you apart in a matter of days. here, you’d stay preserved in the ice for months. either way, they’d never find your body. you dearly hope that won’t happen to you for a very, very long time. you’re not sure who would take your place, really. dave doesn’t know how to code.

you pull the venison from the flames and nudge him over to the kitchen with you. he reminds you to head outside and place some more wood at the back of the smoking tent to keep the cinders hot, and you do, and when you come back in and kick the snow from your ankles, he smiles at you. you’d kill for that smile.

he’s cut the venison into smaller segments and tossed it into a pot to boil down for a while. you ask him if he’s making stew. he shakes his head, grabs some bones from the icebox, and places them in too.

“why the bones?” you ask, flicking some of the snow from your shoulder at his face.

he looks at you in amusement and goes back to his cooking. “lots of collagen. good for making a gelatinized broth.”

you raise your brows and ask him why in god’s name he’s making gelatin. he gets distracted for a bit before responding, pausing in thought as he glances at the window, before scavenging some flour from the cabinets.

“i’m making soup dumplings,” he finally says. “gelatinized broth is how you get the soup in. here, help me make the dough, while this boils down.”

he does most of the work, but you do your best to help. it’s slow work, but surprisingly simple to grasp, even with your tendency towards clumsiness, and you can’t for the life of you figure out why he didn’t just wait until you were back in walmart territory to grab the proper ingredients. this, right here, right now, is as domestic as he’ll ever get, you suspect.

“we’re making this out of deer?” you ask, seeking clarification even as he pours the broth into a shallow tray and sets it in the icebox to solidify. “i had assumed this was a pork dish.”

he laughs lightly, something he rarely does, and dries his hands by the fireplace. he tells you that he’s taking a different approach. that this is a disgracefully inaccurate take on the traditional recipe.

you roll your eyes at him.

“miller would be so fucking proud of me,” he jokes, and you join him by the fire. “he used to screw with recipes all the time.”

you nod absently. you never knew the guy. “you’re a strange man,” you comment, and it’s true. he is very strange.

he kneels down beside the flames, looking vaguely as if he might let himself fall into them, consuming himself in the flame like the ouroboros eating its own tail. you steady your hand on his shoulder and drop down to his side. the clicks and crackles of the cinders fill your ears. it’s the sound of bones breaking.

he smells like iron, and his lips are cold as he dusts them across the corner of your mouth.

the light is red in here, where the blues from the windows barely reach, and the firelight coats the air in a virulent, sharp warmth.

on rare occasions, you’re a cautious man. you shift him away from the fire, but the two of you stay down on the old pine floor.

he looks as if he may kiss you again, so you kiss him first. everything’s a competition between you two, even if he doesn’t know you’re competing. you’ve always been so competitive. it’s a side of you he’s never known.

“there aren’t enough living things out here,” you whisper against his jaw, lacing your fingers between the steely strands of his hair, flecked with bits of blood that catch under your fingernails. “how did you do this for so long? how are you managing it, even now?”

“i just pretend the rest of the world is dead and start from there.”

“sounds sad,” you frown.

“sounds peaceful,” he wisps distantly, resting his head on your shoulder. “the fifty dogs certainly helped.”

“i could stay here forever,” you muse quietly.

“you just said you couldn’t stand it here.”

“no, not here. i didn’t mean here.”

he smiles at you quizzically, like you’re a puzzle where the cat stole two pieces and hid them under the fridge. “then what’d you mean, hal?”

“surely we aren’t the only ones in the world who can do this job.”

he sighs, eyes drawn back to the melody of the flame. “if it were that easy to replace us, we wouldn’t be doing this.”

“yes, we would,” you say, a habitual truth-spitter.

he hums.

“let’s get fifty more dogs. new ones.”

“they wouldn’t be mine,” dave protests.

“exactly. they’d be ours. we’d live together here with our fifty dogs and slings and arrows and no one would ever bother us again.”

it’s a brilliant offer. too good to be true because it isn’t. you’re drawn to your own maybe-suggestions like a moth to maybe-candlelight.

“then who would stave off the nuclear apocalypse?” he asks. he’s trying to joke. he’s never been great at jokes.

“absolutely no one,” you state solidly, and for a wonderful and monstrous minute you think he may be considering it. hell, you think you may be considering it, too.

“we can’t,” he finally decides.

“we can’t,” you agree, and steep in the silence for a while. “we could get married.”

he moves his head from your shoulder and looks you in the eye. “i really can’t tell if you’re joking, sometimes. it’s strange.”

“i can’t tell if i’m joking either.” you pause. “just think about it. fifty dogs. or two dogs, two is fine.”

he smiles at you, tilting his head like he’s waiting for a punch line or a denouement.

“two dogs,” you continue. “an apartment we can stay in for more than two months without getting shot in our sleep. we could get married.”

“what is with your sudden fixation on marrying me?” he asks, still smiling.

given that you’ve only ever kissed one and a half times, all within the last two minutes, and are not actually together, his aversion to the idea is is valid.

“tax benefits,” you respond. you are far from silver-tongued.

“i’m legally dead. and a fugitive. i don’t pay taxes.”

“two dogs,” you repeat, and it’s mostly a joke this time. you look over to the warmth. “i hate the fire.”

“you hate the cold,” he corrects, following your gaze.

“no, i hate the fire.”

“i can drown it, if you’d prefer.”

you try to hide your slight wince. “yes, that would be nice.”

he stops and shakes his head. “i was hoping you’d change your mind. i’m not putting out the fire unless you’re certain. you’ll be cold.”

you don’t respond.

“i’ll be cold, too,” he offers, and you surrender.

“fine. leave it burning.” (drown it. drown it. drown it.)

“are you sure?” he asks, glancing back over. “i can understand why you’d be sick of it.”

you shake your head. “no, you’re right. i’d rather not freeze to death.”

he nods, and rests his head back against your shoulder, breathing into the fabric of your sweater. “yeah, we can get married some day. we can’t, not now, but eventually.”

you laugh. “why the sudden change of heart?”

“you had me at two dogs,” he says, smiling against your neck. “though to be fair, it’s incredibly unlikely that i’ll stop at just two.”

“we can’t fit fifty dogs in an apartment, snake,” you whisper.

“watch me,” he whispers back, and kisses you.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, thank you all dearly for reading. comments and kudos mean so much to me.


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